Installing Flash in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Published May 31, 2006 General , Technology , Ubuntu 23 Comments

Due to a bug in the Ubuntu version of Firefox, installation of plugins like flash through the browser will always fail. The good news is, there's an quick way to fix it.

Go to the "Applications" menu, then to "Accessories" and click on "Terminal".
Enter the following (without quotes) in the terminal.
"mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins"

That's it. Now you can go to a website that requires flash and it will install without a hitch.

23 Responses to “Installing Flash in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS”

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1 chris June 19, 2006 at 3:50 am

nice. that did the trick!
2 Wes August 7, 2006 at 7:27 am

Thanks for this, it worked fine.
3 Jeff Hampton August 19, 2006 at 5:48 am

Didnt Work, Said “mkdir: cannot create directory `/home/jeff/.mozilla/plugins’: File exists” I REALLY NEED FLASH, PLEASE HELP ME.
4 James August 23, 2006 at 8:17 am

Jeff, if you already have that directory and flash still won’t install, congratulations. You have a new, exciting, and completely different problem.

Try installing from the official packages. iirc, you should be able to do it by enabling the metaverse or universe repositories (don’t remember which one it is), then running the following commands.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
sudo update-flashplugin
5 ozeed September 7, 2006 at 5:55 pm

how do i instal flash and limewire in Ubuntu
the real question is how do i install commercial linux software in Ubuntu
6 James September 8, 2006 at 1:28 pm

Ozeed – I’ve posted instructions for Flash, and most things (LimeWire included) work “out of the box” once you’ve installed Easy Ubuntu.

“How do I install commercial Linux software in Ubuntu” is a pretty broad question. That’s like asking “How do I install commercial software on Windows?”
It depends on what you want to run. As with Windows, a lot of stuff simply needs to be extracted from the archive or installed through a setup program.

But this is commercial software, right? Call tech support, you’ve probably bought it with the product.
7 Joseph Villa September 20, 2006 at 7:49 am

i’m getting this when ever i try to install via apt-get:

villa@Xserve1:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Suggested packages:
mozilla-browser mozilla-firefox msttcorefonts ttf-xfree86-nonfree xfs
Recommended packages:
libesd0-alsa libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
flashplugin-nonfree
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/15.8kB of archives.
After unpacking 168kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages …
Selecting previously deselected package flashplugin-nonfree.
(Reading database … 102224 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking flashplugin-nonfree (from …/flashplugin-nonfree_7.0.68~ubuntu1~dapper1_i386.deb) …
Setting up flashplugin-nonfree (7.0.68~ubuntu1~dapper1) …
Downloading… done.
usage: update-rc.d [-n] [-f] remove
update-rc.d [-n] defaults [NN | sNN kNN]
update-rc.d [-n] start|stop NN runlvl [runlvl] […] .
-n: not really
-f: force
dpkg: error processing flashplugin-nonfree (–configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
flashplugin-nonfree
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
8 Joseph September 20, 2006 at 7:50 am

i’ve tried all methods listed previously and nothing seems to work!
9 Joseph September 20, 2006 at 7:51 am

output:

villa@Xserve1:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Suggested packages:
mozilla-browser mozilla-firefox msttcorefonts ttf-xfree86-nonfree xfs
Recommended packages:
libesd0-alsa libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
flashplugin-nonfree
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/15.8kB of archives.
After unpacking 168kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages …
Selecting previously deselected package flashplugin-nonfree.
(Reading database … 102224 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking flashplugin-nonfree (from …/flashplugin-nonfree_7.0.68~ubuntu1~dapper1_i386.deb) …
Setting up flashplugin-nonfree (7.0.68~ubuntu1~dapper1) …
Downloading… done.
usage: update-rc.d [-n] [-f] remove
update-rc.d [-n] defaults [NN | sNN kNN]
update-rc.d [-n] start|stop NN runlvl [runlvl] […] .
-n: not really
-f: force
dpkg: error processing flashplugin-nonfree (–configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
flashplugin-nonfree
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
10 James September 21, 2006 at 9:31 pm

Joseph, Ubuntu only “suggests” packages you don’t have installed, right? Well, I’m guessing the Ubuntu Flash package needs Mozilla to function correctly. Actually, all those packages recommended and suggested should probably be installed for maximum smoothness and lack-of-headace-ness.

Worst comes to worst, just go grab the tarball from the official site and install Flash manually, it’s not that bad. (Really!)
11 Cletus Baird October 19, 2006 at 8:03 pm

Thanks very much!
I installed Linux Flash Beta 9 today and had similar problems. But, the mkdir solution for the mozilla plugins solved the sound problem fine, even with ubuntu and macromedia flash 9 beta.
12 NoobieDoobieDo December 27, 2006 at 6:12 am

Genius
13 watchers watcher April 12, 2007 at 5:26 am

hey i typed”exec” before “mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins” after getting a dupe file response and it seemed to take…………or did i screw somethin else up in doing so?
14 James April 13, 2007 at 1:56 am

Huh, I honestly don’t know. Does exec hide command output?

But, yeah. If you already have “~/.mozilla/plugins” and flash still doesn’t work, you should probably look elsewhere for a solution.

I hear Feisty has an increased focus on making sure people can easily locate and install proprietary codecs, and I’m hoping that Flash is included. Actually, I have no idea if this is even still and issue in Edgy. Sorry.
15 Object Constant April 16, 2007 at 10:42 am

Wow, Awesome, I always installed flash by downloading it, installing it, then editing firefox config file to include the sound driver and etc. and this, wow. Thanks!
16 Hira May 29, 2007 at 2:55 pm

it really works for me and thank you for posting it 🙂
17 Gary August 4, 2007 at 8:50 pm

Can’t get flash to work…. Help please. I get the following message:

gary1952@hustcomputer:~$ mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins
mkdir: cannot create directory `/home/gary1952/.mozilla/plugins’: File exists
gary1952@hustcomputer:~$
18 James August 13, 2007 at 3:54 pm

Gary, if you get that message and flash install fails, I’m not sure what to tell you.

You might try running apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree. If that fails, take a look at this page from the documentation website. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/Flash?action=show&redirect=Flash
19 Peter February 13, 2008 at 9:01 pm

“sudo apt-get update”
“sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree”

Now it works, thanks for posting!!
20 Richard June 12, 2008 at 8:10 am

I am receiving this response. I am very new to all this.

eMac:~$ sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
E: Couldn’t find package flashplugin-nonfree
eMac@ubuntu:~$
21 James June 12, 2008 at 11:47 am

Richard,
This is an old post written for Ubuntu 6.06, which is now obsolete, even by Canonical’s long-term support standards. I highly recommend that you upgrade if you are still using it.

Now, if you are talking about doing this on a newer release, a wizard should pop up an automate the task of installing flashplugin-nonfree when you visit a webpage requiring flash and click on the “install plugin” button. It even worked for me, the guy who breaks everything. 😉

If you can’t do that for some reason, add the Universe and Multiverse repositories, run “sudo apt-get update”, then try running “sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree” again.

The official Ubuntu documentation tells how to add repositories here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu

Hope that helps!
22 Stefano June 1, 2009 at 5:52 am

Thank you!

God bless you
23 Tayfun September 17, 2010 at 11:50 am

thank you. this is working fine. thank you…:D